Mobile Voices (VozMob) is a platform for immigrant workers and / or low income can create stories about their lives and communities directly from their mobile phones. Each week the team discusses popular media stories, develops and shares knowledge, designs the system, and creates training tools. The communication equipment is made popular by day laborers, domestic workers, and youth volunteers have taken very seriously the role of writing their own history. We also meet every week at USC to develop research on the project.

Poder Sano is a new initiative by Farmworker Justice to help mobilize rural Latino communities around the prevention of HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections, and tuberculosis. Through this project, Farmworker Justice will provide free capacity-building assistance and community mobilization tools to strengthen community-based organizations' HIV prevention programs, improve monitoring and evaluation practices, and create partnerships for program support.

Poder Sano aims to mobilize rural Latino communities around the prevention of HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections, tuberculosis, hepatitis, and other health concerns relevant to migrant farmworkers.

The Texas After Violence Project is an independent narrative and human rights project. They:

1. listen empathetically and without judgment to people directly touched by serious violence or other serious human rights violations, the criminal justice system, incarceration, and executions in Texas; 
2. digitally record and transcribe these narratives;
3. share the recordings and transcriptions to the extent, at the time, and in the manner to which individual narrators consent; so that we may
4. promote collective, critical, and constructive conversations in which communities develop more effective, just, and compassionate ways to both prevent and respond to violence.

They work toward a more just and less violent Texas: a society that recognizes and affirms the dignity and value of every human being.

A one-page resource that describes the connection between diabetes and high blood pressure. Available in Spanish and English.

This brochure was created by the Migrant Clinicians Network Diabetes Program with funding from the Texas Department of Health Diabetes Program / Council. Brochure details basic information on Acanthosis Nigricans. Available in Spanish and English.

California Department of Public Health, Division of Environmental and Occupational Disease Control has identified several cases of mercury toxicity linked to the use of adulterated, unlabelled face creams in the Latino community.  

Our topic for the month is H1N1 vaccinations.  Dealing with both seasonal flu vaccinations and the constant swirl of information, availability, and updates around the H1N1 vaccine has made this a challenging season flu season for providers.  We offer direct links to several CDC web pages and one patient flyer from the CDC.

A bilingual training kit for community health workers to educate families about in home pesticide safety.  Includes a step-by-step facilitator guide with handouts and a power point slide slow.  Developed by the Center for Environmental Resource Management at UTEP for US-Mexico border residents.

Un paquete bilingue para ayudar a trabajadores comunitarios de la salud a educar familias sobre la forma segura de usar pesticidas en el hogar.  Hay instrucciones paso a paso, los materiales para distribuir y la presentación para mostrarse estan disponibles en Español. Estas pláticas se enfocan a los residentes de la frontera EU-México y fue realizado por el Centro para la Administración de Recursos Ambientales de la Universidad de Texas en El Paso.

First of all, this month we offer some reminders for resources that are available to help you navigate, with your clients, between immunization requirements in the US and those from neighboring Mexico.   Second, we guide you to a link on the World Health Organization website where you can check other countries’ immunization requirements and schedules.   This may give you a starting point for understanding your migrant clients’ immunization histories. Third, we offer a sample bi-lingual parent-held pediatric vaccine record.  Remember, “the most reliable source of vaccine information on any particular individual is that individual! Contrary to popular belief, parents DO carry portable vaccination records when given them. This is particularly true for immigrant families, who are used to carrying important documents and who realize the potential of revaccination if records are unavailable to the local provider.”  Jennie McLaurin, MD Finally, in the season of giving, our gift offer to the clinics participating in Immunization Initiatives  send us the English patient-held vaccine record you use for your clients, and we will translate it into Spanish. We offer this first to the clinics participating in Immunization Initiatives, and to the first six clinics who contact us.  Email the listserv administrator to make arrangements at kath@healthletter.com

Looking for complete and dependable information in plain language about heart, lung, and blood diseases and sleep disorders in Spanish? Check out the NHLBI's Spanish-language topics on the Diseases and Conditions Index (DCI)

Photonovelas in English and Spanish. Produced by the North Carolina Farmworker Project.

Our June topic is IIS or Immunzaion Registries. Between August and October of 2008, immunization initiative staff at MCN conducted structured interviews with all State Immunization Coordinators or their designated contact persons in an effort to identify state programs that address the immunization needs. In response to the question “does your state have an electronic immunization registry?” we found that 42 states have registries, six states are in the process of implementing them, and two states do not have registries. Out of 42 states with registries, 37 are in both public and private settings and 31 are “birth to death” registries, including both children and adults. To view report, go to: http://www.migrantclinician.org/toolsource/resource/interviews-state-programs-addressing-immunization-needs.html

We offer three articles that discuss the progress of using immunization registries to improve recording and access of immunization data. Click on the links below to access the full articles.

Spanish brochure to help workers prevent taking lead into their homes from the CA Dept. Public Health, Occupational Health Branch - The Occupational Lead Poisoning Prevention Program.

The Immunization Initiative at MCN promotes improving childhood, adolescent, and adult immunization coverage levels among migrant and other mobile underserved populations. During the course of the initiative, anecdotal and documented evidence of an increase in the Hispanic indigenous population in United States and outside California surfaced from various sources. A separate initiative emerged, to design and develop a piece of educational material specifically for this population. This article, published in Streamline (March-April, 2009) discusses this initiative.